REBEL BINGO | London, The Clapham Grand

Welcome to your grandma’s dirty little secret. Judging by the reactions of my friends when I tell them I’m going to play bingo on a Friday night, it’s been well kept.

The Clapham Grand is heaving and we queue up to buy our numbers and big red pens. Handy hint – don’t write slut across your forehead because it is really hard to get off, and you will have to get home like that. But maybe if you really want someone to remember your number. As the count down starts the nervous anticipation sets in. Why are we all standing? Why am I even here? Clubbing meets bingo and it’s much bigger than the sum of it’s parts – the emotion and general hilarity took me by surprise.

They love the play off the reaction of the typical bingo community. One of their tweets opens the show – they use twitter?! – “@rebelbingo is a disgusting joke that has gone too far and is ruining a sacred national pastime.”

The weirdness graph for the evening increases exponentially until we’re screaming at a dry cracker eating contest for the prize of a LOT of takeaway vouchers (or a giant stuffed panda, it all gets a bit hazy). In all seriousness, they put on a really great show. The spiel is hilarious (it’s the second oldest number in the world…number 2!!), accompanied by witty commentary on the screens at the back, and you can’t help but be sucked in to the silliness, craziness and intense number circling. The after party’s not bad either.